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Don has been to orbit.

Who is Don Pettit?

Don Pettit, who has lived in space for 370 days during three missions, is known as Mr. Wizard, Mr. Fixit, and as Dad. He's a chemical engineer, an Eagle Scout, and an explorer on earth and in space. He is also a poet. Personal Data Born 1955 in Silverton, Oregon. ...

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Blood and Treasure

Gold, silk, and spices were the tangible treasures from past explorations. Today, the frontier of space offers treasures that are golden but not gold—secrets about the biochemistry of life, drawn from the bodies of astronauts.

On the Space Station, we are human guinea pigs for a wide variety of medical experiments. We routinely puncture our veins to draw blood, drool on cotton swabs, and urinate in bags. These samples are processed in centrifuges, sprinkled with preservatives, placed in tubes, and stored in MELFI, better known as “the freezer.” Kept at -98° C, the samples are stored for months before returning to Earth. The cold box ensures unthawed recovery of the samples by ground crews, happy life science researchers, and crew members relieved to know that their bloodletting was not in vain.

The cold boxes themselves are an engineering marvel. They are nearly equal in thermal conductivity to a vacuum dewar (Thermos bottle), but have only a fraction of the mass. They are made from truly space-aged materials—aerogel and Mylar. Aerogel is the most gossamer solid material known. Appearing more like solid smoke, it has a density only ten times greater than that of air (steel has a density 7,000 times greater), making it one of the best thermal insulators known, bested only by vacuum. Aerogel is brittle, and easily crumbles into dust. To prevent this from happening, it is placed inside a skin of Mylar (plastic) film. The air is then sucked out, making this structure as rigid as a vacuum-packed bag of coffee (which feels brick-hard until the package is opened). These Mylar-packed aerogel structures can be made into odd shapes, enabling cold boxes to fit in unused pie-shaped spacecraft volumes.

As with any new technology, unintended uses often surface. Such was the case for the cold box. Developed for space, it ended up in Antarctica—not for keeping things cold but for keeping them warm. In 2006-2007, I had the good fortune to live in a tent about 200 miles from the South Pole during a scientific expedition to Antarctica as part of a meteorite gathering team called ANSMET (Antarctic Search for Meteorites). The conditions found in Antarctica preserve and concentrate meteorites, and for the last 30 years, annual expeditions working during the short Antarctic summers have gathered over 20,000 of them. During our six-week stay, we advanced this number by 850.

Guided by the unique orbital perspective of men and women who live and work in Space, our vision is for Fragile Oasis to help people and organizations work together to overcome the challenges facing humanity on Earth.